Plurality - Feature film plausibility on a shoestring

The blockbuster science-fiction movie look is now available to anyone with a good story, creative vision and persistance.

Plurality is a short science fiction movie that pays homage both to the look and feel of Minority Report, not in a derivative way but using it more as a validation for the type of universe that is cleverly established in the mere 15 minutes of the film.

The key to the film is plausibility, where pervasive digital advertising meets online forensics. Where social networks meet crime-busting social dystopia. If you extrapolate our current timeline, you can actually see this happening.

And at no time during this breathless quarter of an hour does it occur to you that this was made on a shoestring budget, filmed on Canon 5D and 7D DSLRs, and that the 2023 New York cityscape - complete with existing and newly imagined CGI buildings - was created on low-cost, commodity equipment and not a vast Hollywood render farm.

Director Dennis Liu and Writer Ryan Condal have not just made a film about the future, they've shown us the future of film-making, where the lack of a blockbuster budget is no obstacle to a brilliant story, and a powerful creative vision.

David is the Editor In Chief of RedShark Publications. He's been a professional columnist and author since 1998, when he started writing for the European Music Technology magazine Sound on Sound. David has worked with professional digital audio and video for the last 25 years.